“Arizona Republicans have an opportunity in 2022 to claw back ground they’ve lost as the state shifted towards Democrats. But first, the fight over 2020 has to end. Republicans in the state are still divided over the results of the last election, months after President Joe Biden was sworn into office. An ongoing and extraordinary audit of the 2020 vote count in the state’s largest county – rooted in conspiracy theories and the false belief that Biden’s election was not legitimate – is deepening the schism six months after the election, with no clear end in sight. The GOP-controlled state Senate subpoenaed ballots from Maricopa County, where more than half of Arizona’s voters live, and hired a previously unknown private firm to conduct the audit. Republican supporters say the effort is necessary to ease concerns of voters about the 2020 vote count.”

“But other Republicans are speaking out to warn that the amateurish conduct of the audit and the conspiracy theories it has amplified could cause lasting damage to the party. Next year they must defend an open governor’s seat and try to flip back one of the two Senate seats Democrats took in the last two elections. Instead of a wake-up call spurred by those two Trump-era losses and Biden’s narrow statewide victory, they worry the audit is the latest sign of the Republican Party marginalizing itself in a state where it once reigned supreme. ‘First of all, you do need to get to a point where you say, ‘Okay, we’re done. We have sufficiently addressed concerns that might be out there in the community.’ And I feel like we had gotten to that point,’ Bill Gates, a Republican Maricopa County supervisor, said in an interview. He said the county’s previous audit and recounts of ballots already determined there were no issues in the election. ‘I believe that this is only appealing to a certain segment of the Republican Party,’ Gates said. ‘I think there are many Republicans who are horrified by what’s going on. I think there are very few independents who aren’t horrified by what’s going on” – Politico.